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So this is maybe one of the more bizarre ideas i've seen for a while. but it does go to show just how much the Chinese government knows about it's citizens.

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State-run newspaper China Daily reported that officials in the Chinese province of Hebei created the app, named 'map of deadbeat debtors', which can be accessed through social media app WeChat.

The app alerts users with a flash when they are within 500 meters of someone who is in debt - the newspaper claimed.

It also shows the exact location of the debtor, although it is not clear whether it displays any personal information.

Aimed at getting citizens to keep an eye on people in debt, it is not clear how much debt a person must be in to be featured.

China Daily said it would let people 'whistle-blow on debtors capable of paying their debts.'

The new system, an extension on a person's credit score, will come into use in 2020 and will judge a person based on their trustworthiness and behavior on public transport. .

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The app name translates to “map of deadbeat debtors”, and can be accessed via WeChat, China’s most popular instant-messaging platform. The idea is that it will allow people to “whistle-blow on debtors capable of paying their debts.”

The Hebei-based app is one part of this tracking system, but this social credit scoring is already having an impact in China. According to China Daily, more than 6,000 people who failed to pay their taxes on time or misbehaved on public transport were barred from taking planes or trains in and out of China between June 2018 and January 2019.

It’s not only this type of app that displays the Chinese future of social credit. One project, named Sesame Credit from the financial wing of the tech company Alibaba, teamed up with a matchmaking service Baihe to promote clients with good credit scores, as reported by the BBC.

Imagine being blocked from Tinder because you hadn’t paid your student loan off yet. It’s frightening, to say the least.

There is yet to be any details regarding rewards for people to actually "whistle blow" on this kind of thing, I can only imagine the Chinese Government will come up with some way to incentivize their citizens to do their job for them.

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Additionally, the new system is blocking tons of people from booking flights and train rides. Among some of the other ways you can draw scrutiny to yourself and potentially a negative score is if you reportedly play an excessive amount of video games and post fake news online. You can also be punished with slower internet speeds, reduced access to good schools and getting banned from certain jobs.

a bad credit score can suck, but imagine if it was tied to almost everything in your life?

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*slap roofs of china*

This baby can fit so many dystopian books in it.

Normally i would say that this will never take off because of how stupid it is and how easily abusable the system is, but this is China; Human Rights ignoring champion for the last forever amount of years

Reminds me of the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive". i remember watching this and thinking "wow that would suck to have everything in your life tied to a points system that determines what you can do and your worth in society". China on the other hand thought "holy shit, that's the best idea ever"

People with debts will never install it, cant force android users too.

only adding this spyware in next ios is possible

It's embedded in WeChat which must be a very popular app in China, also iOS has a relatively small marketshare in China because of how expensive they are and the wide array of local Chinese phones available. But you're correct, Apple would never allow this type of monitoring on their devices, unless the US Government wanted them to implement a similar feature.